Footprints in Time
by Kakawot
Summary: Any creature who sets foot in the TARDIS is doomed. Larger energies are at work, but the Doctor doesn't know. A view of the Doctor's adventures from the universe's point of view, and it's not looking good.


**A/N: **I'm ESL, so if you come across any weird spelling or grammar, please let me know.

Enjoy!

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Time Lords, they called themselves. Or rather, that's what he called _himself_, the Last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, the single remaining organism punching holes through the vortex.

The name 'Time Lord' was presumptuous, ridiculous, ludicrous. As if anyone had any sway over time, or any mastery of it. It acted like the mythical serpent, forever changing, mutating, evolving whenever a head got cut off.

And the heads rolled whenever the screaming energies of the cursed TARDIS tore through the time vortex, forever mutating the time stream. The Doctor's footprint was all over time, from the earliest beginnings to the end of the universe, his signature printed sharp and fresh upon the energies.

But there were energies, ancient energies which even the Gallifreyan race hadn't accounted for. Like the Beast, creatures existed from Before Time. No mortal could understand it, no creature born somewhere in the time stream which ran like an undercurrent through all of creation could grasp it, but it was there nonetheless. You didn't always have to give it a name for it to exist.

Those creatures, if forced to be branded with something as primitive as a name, they knew. Time travel was possible, improbable, incredibly hard to achieve, but the creatures cursed the fickle time vortex which gave the Gallifreyan species access to it. At first, the Gallifreyan race treated the vortex with respect, repairing every hole they created. But with the Time Wars came the ravages, the ruins of the time vortex. They almost managed to destroy all of time and creation, almost freeing the creatures from Before Time.

Lucky for the universe, the Doctor existed. He burnt the planets, wiped the two threats to the stability of the time vortex out of existence. But then he proceeded to punch more holes into the time vortex than any other creature in the history of the universe. He crossed his own personal timeline with gleeful abandon. Or as he said it 'for cheap tricks'. He claimed to try and fix things, but he did it within his own moral perception of right and wrong.

He stopped change. Nearly all of his actions resulted in lives being lost and saved, but then the Doctor took off in his TARDIS. He never stood still by what his actions meant for the progress in the universe, the bigger picture. He might've saved lives, but sometimes people were destined to die. Every time a person was 'saved', the Doctor doomed the universe.

As a Gallifreyan, he had a limited perception of reality. He was more perceptive than most, but he still lacked the fundamental understanding of the universe. He felt the whirl of a planet, but failed to feel the churning of the galaxy.

Time energy ran all over the universe, known and unknown to the sentient species out there. It commanded suns to explode, and controlled the flow of reality down to the smallest of grains rolling a certain way off a heap of sand. It was chaotic, forever rippling with every course of action, splitting off into infinite universes. It was an energy freed by chaos.

But like all forms of energy, it had to abide by rules. It moved forward, always forward, until the end of time. The humans were right, 'time goes on', and on and on, making the proverbial 'end of time' a long, infinite way off. And when time did stop, which it did not, it kept on going, piercing through holes, trickling into other universes, creating new universes, until it forced another big bang and like a rushing river it flowed in that direction, kept on going. Even at the end of the universe it didn't stop. It just found a hole to another parallel dimension, and the energies flowed through the tiniest portal, forever spreading itself over all the universes. There was no universe where time didn't exist.

Besides the rule forcing it to keep moving, there was another one. It doomed every time travelling being to ever exist, by accident or on purpose. The mortal creatures didn't know, had never known, because it happened so gradually nobody noticed it, until it was too late.

For beings who had once been inside the time vortex, they'd always have the vortex energy in them. The brain (or any similar 'thinking' organ) kept the chaos of the energy out, kept the atoms of the body together, anchoring it in time.

But when those electrical impulses died, the time vortex swooped in and absorbed all of the atoms, electron by electron, until there was nothing left. 'Nothing', another concept caught in a word but never truly understood by any race. They imagined a dark room, a moonless night, the absence of noise when they heard 'nothing', but the reality was so much more frightening. Because once a creature got absorbed by the time vortex, not a single atom remained of him, her or it. The time vortex took it all, never giving it back to the first three dimensions.

Other creatures who died, those atoms got scattered across the planet, and eventually the universe. They might become the heart of a star, a cloud in the air, the dot on a piece of paper. They might not live in the biological sense of the word, but they existed.

So the Doctor doomed his companions, anyone he ever took aboard his time ship, himself included. Bit by bit he killed the universe, atom by atom he doomed the vast expanse of being into the time vortex, which would forever flow, but only with time, no longer matter.

Because everybody had to take the slow path, there were no shortcuts.

The future's not theirs to see.

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**A/N:** Inspired by, as you might have guessed, the song 'que sera', which grabbed my mind and yanked it into an existential direction. I hope my descriptions made sense to you. If not, please tell me where I lost you, so I can work on it.


End file.
